India's three biggest mobile operators spent heavily to renew licenses and amass 3G spectrum.
Details of license winners in India's $17.5 billion spectrum sale were released yesterday, showing that India's three biggest mobile operators had managed to cling on to their 900MHz holdings and pick up new airwaves for the rollout of 3G services. (See India's Mega Spectrum Sale Garners $17.5B and India's Spectrum Sale Shatters Records .)
Bharti Airtel Ltd. (Mumbai: BHARTIARTL), Vodafone India and Idea Cellular Ltd. -- which had all been fighting to defend existing 2G operations -- stumped up as much as 78% of the total auction proceeds, while Reliance Communications Ltd. (the country's number-four player) appeared to lose some of its 900MHz concessions and Uninor walked away from process empty-handed.
Although India's Department of Telecom (DoT) has released provisional results, they remain subject to government approval as well as a Supreme Court ruling on complaints about the auction procedures. In the meantime, Light Reading has prepared a breakdown of how each player performed on this provisional basis.
Idea Cellular
At risk of losing mobile licenses covering nine circles (or service areas), Idea Cellular was an especially aggressive bidder in the 900MHz band. In total, it procured 54MHz in this frequency range at a cost of INR276.4 billion ($4.4 billion). But it secured just 20.4MHz in the 1800MHz band and only 5MHz in the 2.1GHz band and did not even bid for spectrum on offer in the 800MHz band. Evidently, Idea's idea was to focus its energies on 900MHz spectrum and look to 1800MHz and 2.1GHz only in circles where it could not procure the former.
Circle | 900MHz | 1800MHz | 2.1GHz | |||
Spectrum | Cost ($M) | Spectrum | Cost ($M) | Spectrum | Cost ($M) | |
Andhra Pradesh | 5MHz | 544.33 | − | − | − | − |
Assam | − | − | − | − | − | − |
Bihar | − | − | − | − | − | − |
Chattisgarh | − | − | − | − | − | − |
Gujarat | 5MHz | 538.14 | − | − | − | − |
Himachal Pradesh | − | − | 4.8MHz | 12.21 | − | − |
Haryana | 6MHz | 145.05 | − | − | − | − |
Karnataka | 5MHz | 445.78 | 1MHz | 29.59 | − | − |
Kolkata | − | − | − | − | 5MHz | 92.42 |
Kerala | 6MHz | 354.45 | − | − | − | − |
Madhya Pradesh | 7.4MHz | 366.27 | − | − | − | − |
Maharashtra | 9MHz | 1,112.58 | − | − | − | − |
North East |